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ARGUMENT 

OP 

HOW. DANIEL W. VOQBHEES, 

OF TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA. 

DELIVERED AT 

CHARLESTOWN, VIRGINIA, NOV. 8, 1859, 

IN 

DEFENSE OF JOHJN B. COOK, 

INDICTED FOR TREASON, MURDER, AND INCITING 

SLAVES TO REBEL AT THE HARPER'S f 

FERRY INSURRECTION. 



With the Permission of the Court— 

Gentlemen of the Jury The place I occupy in standing before you at 
this time is one clothed with a responsibility as weighty and as delicate as 
was ever assigned to an advocate in behalf of an unfortunate fellow-man— 
No language that I can employ could give any additional force to the circum- 
stances by which I am surrounded, and which press so heavily on the public 
mind as well as on my own I come, too, as a stranger to each one of you. 
i our faces I know only to the common image we bear to our Maker ; but, in 
your exalted character of citizens of the ancient Commonwealth of Virginia 

^JtitZZl ^ * ^ * ^ * *"*"< * < M ^ ^ a 
[After recapitulating the main facts of Cook's participation in the invasion 
his past history, his subordination to John Brown, &c, Mr. Voorhees pro- 
ceeds : 

But, gentlemen in estimating the magnitude of this young man's guilt, 
there is one fact which is proven in his behalf by the current history of the 
day which you cannot fail to consider: ShallJohn E. Cook perish, and the 
real criminals, who for twenty years have taught the principles on which he 
acted, hear no voice from this spot? Shall no mark be placed on them? 
bhall this occasion pass away, and the prime felons who attacked 
your soil and murdered your citizens at Harper's Ferry escape? The 
indictment before us says that the prisoner was seduced - by the false 
and malignant counsels of other traitorous persons. Never was a sen- 
tence written more just and true. "False and malignant counsels" have 



been dropping for yean, as deadly and blighting a* the poison of the 

. from the tongues of evil and traitorous persons in 

that section of the Union to which the prisoner belongs. They have 

I not only hi- mind, bul many others, bohesl and misgui led like him, 

ird the crime at Harper's Ferry as no crime; your rights as unmiti- 

I the constitution of the gpuntry as a league with hell and 

ftant with death. On the skirts of the leaders of abolition fanaticism 

NoriiiT- every drop of blood shed in the conflict at Harper's Ferry; 
on their 60uls rests the crime of murder for <>\-(>ry life there lo-t ; and all 
the water- of the ocean could not wash the stain- oi' slaughter from their 
treacherous and guilty bands. 

A noted Boston abolitionist, (Wendell Phillips) a few days ago, at Brook- 
lyn, New York, in the presence of thousands, Bpeaking of this tragic occur- 
••h is the natural result of anti-slavery teaching For one, I 
accept it. 1 expected it" I, too, accept it in the same light, and so will 
the country. Those who taught and not those who believed and acted, are 
the m ii of crime in the sight of God. And to guard other young men, so 
far as in iu_. power, from the fatal snare which lias been tightened around 
the hopes ami destiny of John E. Cook, and to show who are fully responsi- 
ble for his conduct, I intend to link with this trial the names of wiser and 
older men than he ; and, if he is to be punished and consigned to a wretched 
doom, they .-hall stand beside him in the public stocks ; they shall be pillori- 
ed forever in public shame, as the evil traitorous persons who seduced him 
to bis ruin by their false and malignant counsels. 

The chief of these men, the leader of a great party, a Senator of long 
standing, ha- announced to the country that there is a higher law than 
the constitution, which guarantees to each man the full exercise of his own 
inclination. The prisoner before you has simply acted on the law of 
Wra. II. Seward, and not the law of his fathers. He has followed the Ma- 
homet of an incendiary faith. Come forth, ye sages of abolitionism, who now 
cower and skulk under hasty denials of your complicity with the bloody re- 
sult of your wicked and unholy doctrines, and take your places on the wit- 

and Tell the world why this thing has happened. Tell this jury 
why they are trying John F. Cook for his life. You advised his conduct, 
and taught him that he was doing right. You taught him a higher law and 
then pointed out to him the field of action. Let facts be submitted. Mr. 

d in speaking of slavery says: "It can and must be abolished, and 
you and I musl doit." What worse did the prisoner attempt? Again, he 
sail, upon this .-am- subject: "Circumstances determine possibilities." And 
doubtless the circumstances with which John Brown bad connected his plans 
mad ■ them possible in his estimation; for it is in evidence before the coun- 
try, unimpeached and uncontradicted, that the great senator of New York 
had tie- whole mailer submitted to him, and only whispered back, in ros- 

. that he had better not been told. lie has boldly announced an irre- 
pressible conflict between the free and slave States of this Union. These 

seditious phrases, "higher law' and l 'irrepre88ible conflict," warrant and in- 
vite the construction which the prisoner and bis young deluded companions 

placed upon them. Yet they an- either in chains, with the frightful gibbet 

in lull riew, or Bleep in dishonored graves, while the apostle and master 
spirit of insurrection i.-> loaded with honors and fares sumptuously every day. 
Su ii i- poor, short handed justice in this world. 

An old man, and for long ye 1TB a member of the National Congress from 
Ohio, next rball testify here before you that he taught the prisoner the terri- 



:.: 



ble error which now involves his life. Servile insurrections have forever 
been on the tongue and lips of Joshua R. Giddings. lie says: "that when the 
contest shall come, when the thunder shall roll and the Lightning flash, and 
when the slaves shall rise in the South in imitation of the horrid scenes of 
the West Indies, when the Southern man shall turn pule and tremble, when 
your dwellings shall smoke with the torch of the incendiary, and dismay sit 
on each countenance, he will hail if as the approaching dawn of that politi- 
cal and moral millenium which he is well assured will come upou the world" 
The atrocity of these sentiments chills the blood of honest patriots, and no 
part of the prisoner's equals their bloody import. Shall the old leader es- 
cape and the young follower die ? Shall the teacher whose doctrines told 
the prisoner that what he did was right, go unscathed of the lightning which 
he has unchained. If so, Justice has fled from her temples on earth, and 
awaits us only on high to measure out what is right between man and man. 
The men who have misled this boy to his ruin shall here receive my male- 
dictions. They shrink back from him now in the hour of his calamity. — 
They lift up their hands and say — amen ! to the bloody spectacle which their 
infernal orgies have summoned up. You hear them all over the land ejaculat- 
ing through false, pale, coward lips, "Thou can'st not say I did it," when their 
hands are reeking with all the blood that has been shed, and which yet awaits 
the extreme penalty of the law. False, fleeting, perjured traitors, false to 
those who have acted upon your principles, false to friends as well a3 coun- 
try, and perjured before the Constitution of the Republic — ministers who 
profess to be of God who told this boy here to carry a Sharpes' rifle to Kan- 
sas instead of his mother's Bible — shall this jury, this court, and this country 
forget their guilt and their imfamy because a victim to their pre- 
cepts is yielding up his life before you ? May God forget me if I here, in 
the presence of this pale face, forget to denounce with the withering, blight- 
ing, blasting power of majestic truth, the tall and stately criminals of the 
Northern States of this Union. 

The visionary mind of the prisoner heard from a member of Congress 
from Massachusetts that a new constitution, a new Bible, and a new God 
were to be inaugurated and to possess the country. They were to be new, 
because they were to be anti-slavery; for the old Constitution, and the old 
Bible, and the God of our fathers, the ancient Lord God of Israel, the same 
yesterday, to-day and forever, were not on the side of abolitionism. Is 
there no mitigation for his doom in the fact that he took his life in his hand, 
and aimed at that which a coward taught him, but dared not himself attempt. 
Base pusillanimous demagogues have led the prisoner to the -bar, but while 
lie suffers — if'suffer he must — they, too, shall have their recreant limbs bro- 
ken on the wheel. I will not leave the soil of Virginia, I will not let this 
awful occasion pass into history, without giving a v^ice and an utterance to 
its true purport and meaning, without heaping upon its authors the load of 
execration which they are to bear henceforth and forever. Day after day 
and year after year has the baneful simoon of revolution, anarchy, discord, 
hostility to the South and her institutions, swept over that section of the 
country in which the lot of the prisoner has been cast. That he ha3 been 
poisoned by its breath should not cut him off from human sympathy ; rather 
should it render every heart clement toward him. He never sought place 
or station, hut sought merely to develop those doctrines which evil and 
traitorous persons had caused him to believe were true. Ministers, editors, 
and politicians — Beecher, Parker, Seward, Giddings, Sumner, Hale, and a 



host of lc?*er lights of each class — who in this court-room, who in this vast 
country, who in the wide world who shall read this trial, believe them not 
guilty as charged in the indictment in all the courts, to a deeper and far more 

fearful extent than John E. Cook. Midnight gloom is not more sombre in 
contra.-t with the blazing light of the meridian sun than is the guilt of such 
men in comparison with that which overwhelms the prisoner. They put in 
motion tin- maelstrom which has engulfed him. They started the torrent 
which has borne him over the precipice. They called forth from the caverns 
the tempest which wm ck< d him on a sunken reef. Before God, and the 
Unlit of Eternal truth, the disaster at Harper's Ferry is their act, and not 
his. May the ghost of each victim to their doctrines of disunion and abom- 
ination Bit heavy on their guilty souls ! May the fate of the prisoner, what- 
ever it may be, disturb their slumbers and paralyze their arms when they 
» ain raised against the peace of the country and the lives of its citi- 
zens ! 1 know by the gleam of each eye into which I look in this jury-box, 
that it' these men could change places with young Cock, you would gladly 
pay to him, " Go, erring and repentant youth, our vengeance shall fall on 
those who paid their money, urged on the attack, and guided the blow." — 
Let me appeal to you. gentlemen of the jury, in the name of Eternal truth 
and everlasting right, is nothing to be forgiven to youth, to inexperience, to 
a gentle kind heart, to a wayward and peculiar though not vicious character, 
strangely apt to be led by present influences ? I have shown you what those 
influences, generally, and specially, have been over the mind of the prison- 
er. I have shown you the malign influence of his direct leader. I have 
shown you, also, the " false and malignant counsels" in behalf of this sad 

entprprisf, emanating from those in placf, power and position. It might 

have been your prodigal son borne away and seduced by such counsels, as 
well as my young client. Do with him as you would have your own child 
dealt by under like circumstances. He has been stolen from the principles 
of his ancestors and betrayed from the teachings of his kindred. If he was 
your own handsome child, repentant and confessing his wrong to his country, 
what would you wish a jury of strangers to do? That do yourselves. By 
that rule guide your verdict ; and the poor boon of mercy will not be cut 
off from him. lie thought the country was about to be convulsed ; that the 
slave was pining for an opportunity to rise against his master; that two- 
thirds of the laboring population of the country, North and South, would 
floGk to the standard of revolt ; that a single day would bring ten, fifty — 
yea, a hundred thousand men — to arms in behalf of the insurrection of the 
■laves. This is in evidence. AVho are responsible for such terrible false 
views? and what kind of a visionary and dreaming mind is that which has 
fatally entertained them? That the prisoner's mind is pliant to the impres- 
sions, whether lor good or evil, by which it is surrounded, let his first inter- 
view in hu prison, with Gov. Willard, in the presence of your senator, Col. 
Mason, bear witness. Mi- error was placed before him. His wrong to his 
family ami hi- country was drawn by a patriotic, and, at the same time, an 
affectionate hand. His natural being at once averted its sway. The influ- 
ence of good, and DOt of evil, once more controlled him as in the days of 
hi- childhood ; and now here before you he lias the merit at Least of a loyal 
citizen making all the atonement in hi.- power for the wrong which he. has 
committed. That he bas told strictly the truth in his statement i- proven 
iy word of evidence in this cause. 



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